Mass Effect 3: Worst Case
by BSG Legacy
Summary: Before ME3, we all had ideas for the plot, this is my version of the "bad" start. What happens if Shepard screwed up every decision. One-shot Drabble. Fairly dark.


No one wanted to believe the reapers were real. No matter how hard Ambassador Anderson tried, the new council dismissed them as wild rumors, power plays by an upstart race trying to muscle to the top of galactic politics.

Some thought the Council was trying to hard to avoid being merely puppets of humanity, others that they were trying to bolster their own defenses with no regard to the other races. Still others thought that _Sovereign_ really _was_ a geth dreadnaught.

Not that any of it mattered. When countless Reapers poured through the Alpha relay, any hit of skepticism vanished. Admiral Hackett led the Fifth Fleet, plus every available ship from every species of citadel space in a valiant attempt to hold the line.

The ensuing battle lasted six minutes.

Many called it the last act of defiance, for after that, the reapers met no more than token resistance. Harbinger himself lead a reaper swarm straight to earth, burned it to a cinder. Every trace of life was scraped off the blue planet, leaving only a burning rock.

Palaven got hit almost as hard. The first fleet under newly-promoted General Vakarain, combined with every armed ship he could scrape together, died to a man to buy minutes for the evacuation. For every turian saved, millions died in agony as Palaven was seared by mass-bombardments.

What Krogan survived Tuchanka's second nuclear winter retreated deep underground, creatures more of myth and legend than galactic fact. The reapers never finished Tuchanka, but left the krogan to rot in their caves. Guess you can't kill what's already dead.

On Sur'Kesh, the reapers barely seemed to bother. Kill teams, both of what remained of the Collectors, and other, similarly enslaved species, methodically made their way through the planet. Every single salarian female was killed, her eggs smashed, as it was with every salarian world. The salarians, as a species, were extinct in all but name.

Thessia... the azure jewel had a fate far ruler than any other. After nuking the spaceports, the reapers unleashed their husks. With their innate biotics, the asari gave the husks a good fight. At first. But those same biotics translated into truly terrifying husks. Reaper tech augmented the asari corpses' biotics to impossible levels.

Thessia was dead in ninteen days.

The reapers weren't harvesting, not this time. Seemed they'd decided we were more trouble than we were worth. Better to kill everything start anew.

And so they flew, slowly, inexorably, from planet to planet, slaughtering every living thing, scraping all hints of civilization off each planet they passed.

But the galaxy did not break. In an image that would become iconic, Nos Astra security cameras caught a turian and quarian, having just given up their seats on an evac transport to two human children, locked in a passionate embrace as the docks burned around them.

But each evacuation brought only temporary safety. The reapers caught up. They always catch up. Whatever losses were incurred on their journeys were inconsequential. And despite the best efforts of the Shadow Broker, there was no weakness, no chink in their armor we could exploit. Life, as a concept, was dieing out.

And yet, we fought ever on. In an ironic twist of fate, Cerberus and the Migrant Fleet were forced into cooperation. With their fleet, and by far the largest population of any single species, the quarians kept their fleet alive by staying constantly on the move. What little remained of the turian and alliance fleets joined up, forming a rag-tag armada of seventy thousand ships.

Meanwhile the Illusive man kept the quarians appraised of reaper movements, locating unguarded fuel or ammo dumps, alerting them of straggler ships bypassed by the reapers, and keeping them one step ahead of the machines. Refugees were shunted to his many remote stations and outposts, some so well hidden, even the Reapers never found them.

But for all its intimate knowledge of alien tech, Cerberus had next to no combat effectives. Using tech recovered from the Collector base, as well as reverse engineered geth tech from a platform captured by Commander Shepard, Cerberus built primitive husks. First from corpses, then from volunteers, and then from the sick and dying. The procedures were horrifying, and even the Illusive man himself called them sick. To save itself, the galaxy was forced to sell its soul.

And even then, these abominations, these... anti-husks barely cognizant enough to fire a rifle did nothing but slow the reapers down.

But even in the darkness, there's sometimes a tiny sliver hope. Word is, _Normandy's_ been spotted all over the galaxy. They say she's operating from a secret base called the crucible, some kind of ancient alien installation hidden deep in a gas giant. Only one man knows where it is, or so the story goes.

Far as I know, long as Shepard's alive... we might have a chance after all.

* * *

_**Author's**_**_ Note_:** Thanks for reading! I was suffering from writers block on Reforged, so this should help cover the wait.


End file.
